The present invention relates to a circular double-cylinder hosiery knitting machine with device for removing and transferring the article at the end of the knitting process, particularly for automating the closure of the toe of hosiery items.
As is known, according to conventional manufacturing processes tubular articles, particularly hosiery items, are generally manufactured by means of circular machines and are unloaded from the machine that manufactures them with both axial ends open. These articles must therefore be subjected to a subsequent sewing or looping operation, which closes one end of the article, constituted by the toe for hosiery items, in order to obtain the finished product.
Since this operation for closing an axial end of the article is an additional production step that requires time and the use of labor, with the associated costs, in recent years methods have been devised and perfected which seek to close one end of the article directly on the manufacturing machine or to automate the transfer of the article from the manufacturing machine to a sewing or looping machine, so as to reduce the overall manufacturing costs of the articles.
The methods that consist in closing an axial end of the article, directly on the manufacturing machine, have the drawback that they penalize considerably the production potential of the machine, since the time required to close the article is a time during which the machine cannot proceed with the production of other articles.
The methods that automate the transfer of the article from the manufacturing machine to a looping or sewing machine and therefore close an axial end of the article externally with respect to the manufacturing machine have the advantage that they allow, after removing the article from the manufacturing machine, to resume production on the part of the machine; therefore they penalize to a lesser extent the production potential of the machine. However, these methods still penalize significantly the productivity of the machine, since the removal of the article from the manufacturing machine still requires a certain time, which cannot be used for manufacturing.
The aim of the present invention is to solve the problems cited above, by providing a circular double-cylinder hosiery knitting machine with a device for removing and transferring the article at the end of the knitting process, particularly for automating the operation of closing the toe of hosiery items, which allows to reduce considerably the time taken away from the manufacturing of the machine, so as to not penalize, or penalize minimally, the productivity of the machine.
Within this aim, an object of the invention is to provide a circular double-cylinder hosiery knitting machine that allows to achieve correct closure of the toe of hosiery item even in the case of high-gauge hosiery items.
Another object of the invention is to provide a method for the automated transfer of a tubular article, particularly a hosiery item, from a circular double-cylinder machine to a sewing machine, which makes it economically convenient to perform this transfer.
Another object of the invention is to provide a circular double-cylinder hosiery knitting machine with a device for removing and transferring the article at the end of the knitting process that is highly reliable and precise in operation.
This aim and these and other objects that will become better apparent hereinafter are achieved by a circular double-cylinder hosiery knitting machine with a device for removing and transferring the article at the end of the knitting process, particularly for automating the closure of the toe of hosiery items, which comprises a lower needle cylinder, which has a vertical axis, and an upper needle cylinder, which is arranged above said lower needle cylinder and coaxially thereto, said needle cylinders being actuatable with a rotary motion about their own axis, characterized in that it comprises a device that is provided with a removal element that can be inserted from above into the upper needle cylinder and is provided with first grip means that can engage a region of the article being manufactured that is proximate to the final end of said article, said removal element being removable upwardly from the upper needle cylinder in order to move the article away from the machine, a transfer element being further provided which is arranged above the upper needle cylinder and is adapted to remove the article from said removal element and to feed it to a sewing machine in order to close said final end of the article.